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L.N. Revathy

COIMBATORE, May 9

ARE racial minorities and women finding the going `not-so-easy' in the US on the job front? An Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) release reveals that racial minorities and women made few inroads into high tech employment between 1996 and 2002. The study was based on data from the US Bureau of Labour Statistics' Current Population Surveys.

The ITAA report found that Hispanic Americans, Native Americans and Asian Americans made gains in the IT workforce.

Hispanic Americans workforce went up by one per cent from 5.4 per cent in 1996 to 6.3 per cent in 2002,.

The Native American workforce increased from 0.2 per cent to 0.6 per cent and Asian Americans from 8.9 per cent to 11.8 per cent in the same period.

The percentage of women in the overall IT workforce fell from 41 per cent to 34.9 per cent between 1996 and 2002, and the percentage of African Americans (in the overall IT workforce) fell to 8.2 per cent from 9.1 per cent during the same period.

This included administrative positions.

When administrative positions were eliminated, the percentage of women ITfs professionals rose marginally from 25 per cent to 25.3 per cent.

The percentage of African American IT professionals from 6 per cent to 6.2 per cent. Over 46 per cent of the US workforce were women and African Americans represented 10.9 per cent of the US workforce in 2002.

The data is said to have been presented in a report by ITAA's Blue Ribbon Diversity Panel, convened to examine the current state of women, minorities, people with disabilities and older workers in the IT workforce.

Additional findings show that women earned only 22 per cent of computer science and engineering undergraduate degrees in 2000.

Hispanic Americans and Native Americans, like women and African Americans, were also under-represented in the IT workforce, as compared to their overall workforce participation.

Hispanics made up 6.3 per cent of the IT workforce but 12.2 per cent of the US workforce in 2002, while Native Americans were 0 .6 per cent of the IT workforce and 0.9 per cent of the U.S. workforce.

Asian Americans were almost three times as prevalent in the IT Workforce than their strength in the overall US workforce.

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